PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Qian Wang AU - Can Yang AU - Joel Gelernter AU - Hongyu Zhao TI - Mediated pleiotropy between psychiatric disorders and autoimmune disorders revealed by integrative analysis of multiple GWAS AID - 10.1101/014530 DP - 2015 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 014530 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/01/29/014530.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/01/29/014530.full AB - Epidemiological observations and molecular-level experiments have indicated that brain disorders in the realm of psychiatry may be influenced by immune dysregulation. However, the degree of genetic overlap between immune disorders and psychiatric disorders has not been well established. We investigated this issue by integrative analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of 18 complex human traits/diseases (five psychiatric disorders, seven autoimmune disorders, and others) and multiple genomewide annotation resources (Central nervous system genes, immune-related expressionquantitative trait loci (eQTL) and DNase I hypertensive sites from 98 cell-lines). We detected pleiotropy in 24 of the 35 psychiatric-autoimmune disorder pairs, with statistical significance as strong as p=3.9e-285 (schizophrenia-rheumatoid arthritis). Strong enrichment (>1.4 fold) of immune-related eQTL was observed in four psychiatric disorders. Genomic regions responsible for pleiotropy between psychiatric disorders and autoimmune disorders were detected. The MHC region on chromosome 6 appears to be the most important (and it was indeed previously noted (1-3) as a confluence between schizophrenia and immune disorder risk regions), with many other regions, such as cytoband 1p13.2. We also found that most alleles shared between schizophrenia and Crohn’s disease have the same effect direction, with similar trend found for other disorder pairs, such as bipolar-Crohn’s disease. Our results offer a novel bird’s-eye view of the genetic relationship and demonstrate strong evidence for mediated pleiotropy between psychiatric disorders and autoimmune disorders. Our findings might open new routes for prevention and treatment strategies for these disorders based on a new appreciation of the importance of immunological mechanisms in mediating risk.